Getting Started with Ruby-on-Rails

I've never used Ruby or Ruby-on-Rails but now that JavaOne 2007 is over, I decided to spend some time understanding the hype behind it. I'll publish this as a multi-series entry sharing my experience.

Ruby-on-Rails main download page requires you to download Ruby, RubyGems and then install Rails. And even then it's missing Apache and MySQL. For a first timer, this is way too many packages to download and install. Anyway there is InstantRails containing Ruby, Rails, Apache, and MySQL, all pre-configured and ready to run but this is hidden down in the page. The first approach of downloading each component individually and then installing/configuring them does not seem to match the promise of "optimized for programmer happiness".

After spending sometime with piecemeal approach (Ruby 1.8.5-24, RubyGems 0.9.3, Installing Rails) and then finding out (Ruby-on-Rails revisited) to install MySQL separately (and who knows other components), I'm planning to use InstantRails.

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